


catch and release

by ediblemomo (junnir)



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/F, Gen, Multi, Will add tags as I go, loosely based on the cheer up mv
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-16 21:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13644630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junnir/pseuds/ediblemomo
Summary: one girl's disappearance entangles nine lives together in a web of deception, betrayals, love and hate.you see, there's only a fine line between love and hate. after all, they both make you do crazy things, don't they?or: it's been a while since mina disappeared. momo makes it her own mission to find her, either by hook or by crook. tzuyu's a world-class violinist born into the wrong family. and chaeyoung's left her past life behind, but her past life can't seem to do the same for her.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> read the preview chapter [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11208216)
> 
> inspired by momo and tzuyu's concepts in the [cheer up mv](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBYPzgSeAlw) \+ this cheer up [mv teaser.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2JUcAj4KnY)
> 
> i've been working on this plot, planning it and rewriting it multiple times, for a little over nine months now. so it's kind of like my little fic baby, in a way. i'll appreciate any comments and kudos, and i welcome constructive criticism of course! anything to make this wild ride better for you.
> 
> and if the story's a little unclear for now, it's meant to be that way. more will come in time to shed some light on what's really going on. so stay tuned!

She wakes up in a puddle of cold sweat and nerves; the beads of perspiration dot her forehead, as if painting an image of how un-put-together she was at the moment.

 

It’s the fifth time this week, and the week’s only just begun.

 

She heaves her way out of the lingering, haunting images, as they fade away one by one with each rise and fall of her chest. She stills herself when she realizes she’s shaking, _hard_ , from her fingers to her limbs to her entire torso.

 

She hears the voices in her head nag at her with crippling comments that target her insecurities, each and every single one of them. Like how she’s not a better fighter than the other females in her bloodline, despite having superior genes. Like how she ought to have made leader by now, at the tender age of 23, instead of being _just another team member_ like her friends were. Like how _her friends_ – if they were still considered those – must now be utterly disappointed in her, just like how her family and everybody else in the force must be. Like how her closest friend in that team was now nowhere to be found and potentially dead, all because of her.

 

_Hirai Momo, you let everybody down._

 

The darkness engulfs and consumes and threatens to take over.

 

She’s breathless and fighting off an all-consuming panic attack by the time warm hands find hers, slender fingers lacing through the gaps between hers. A familiar body presses against hers from her side, bringing along calming, soothing whispers that promise her that she’ll be fine.

 

She doesn’t quite believe it, but it’s the closest thing she has to a last strand of hope.

 

“You’re okay, you’ll be okay,” the voice repeats like a mantra, and she wants nothing more than to believe it.

 

“I’m here, I’m right here,” the voice promises, and it doesn’t sound hollow, not like the words of comfort she gets from people who don’t really, truly care.

 

Momo wants to believe her. Somewhere in the middle of her coming apart in warm, safe hands, she does. Momo believes Sana; believes her like she hasn’t anyone else before.

 

She buries her head in the nook of the girl’s neck as the darkness ebbs away.

Sleep finds her again after a long while.

 

=

 

On another side of town, sleep doesn’t find this one easily.

 

The polished violin reflects moonlight off its surface. She peers into the distance, running shaky fingers gently over the smooth skin of her prized possession.

 

She hears the voices in her head go from soft to loud, at times gently chiding her for her misgivings and other times plainly yelling at her for everything she’s ever done wrong.

 

Somewhere far off in her head, she hears applause and endless compliments, she hears the lauding, the amazement, all surrounding her prodigal title as one of the youngest world-class violinists to have ever stood on that grandeur stage.

 

_Chou Tzuyu, world-class violinist! A young lady of her time!_

 

But the other voices overpower those kind ones, bringing with them a numbing sense of inadequacy that she feels all too well.

 

Her hands still atop the violin. She looks down at them.

 

All she sees is _red_.

 

The blood on her hands won’t go away.

 

She tamps down an urge to scream, reminding herself that she ought to get used to the sight.

 

After all, she has to live with what she’s done.

 

She wills herself to think of something else—of someone else. The same person whose voice she hears when the malicious voices in her head get too much to bear, the same voice that tells her to keep breathing, to keep living, to keep going.

 

The same voice that tells her she is loved.

 

She hasn’t seen Chaeyoung in quite a while, so she wonders how she’s been doing.

 

And just like that, she thinks she can live with what she’s done for yet another day.

 

=

 

In a lonely corner of the town, one girl is on an endless chase.

 

She’s running, her legs moving as fast as they could, faster than she ever imagined herself to be, and yet her target seems to elude capture time after time.

 

She can’t reach her. Her legs are giving out, but she keeps going anyway.

 

It’s different from when she chases after the bad guys, the ones she’s been programmed to take down. This is a different kind of target, this is the kind of target that takes the shape and form of the love of her life, and yet she knows deep down that it’s not really her, not really the girl she loves.

 

The one she’d give her heart to would never slip out of her grasp this easily. She’d never have let her go in the first place.

 

Her body’s telling her to give it up, to just put an end to this silly little wild goose chase, but her mind and heart work as one and tell her to keep going.

 

_Yoo Jeongyeon, you know I’d never leave you._

 

And she keeps going, like a carousel that never stops turning.

 

When she wakes up in the middle of the night, she has to blink through the tears pooling in her eyes in order to see. She wipes the tears away with quick swishes of her hands, but she feels that blood-pumping muscle inside her crack a little more with every night that passes.

 

Because she’s been getting the same nightmare night after night, and they never end. This chase is never going to end. She’s never going to reach her.

 

She’s never going to see her again, is she?

 

She hugs her knees to herself as she tries and fails to stop from crying. She hates being weak but what good was putting up an act anyway?

 

She wishes the love of her life wasn’t lying but as she stares around the empty and dark bedroom, she can’t help but to think that that’s exactly what Mina did.

 

The carousel never stops turning.

 


	2. ii.

She can see him. He’s standing right there, flagged by his underlings, his bright and ugly leopard print jacket in full sight. _Reminder: don’t dress in bright colours if you’re a walking target for your million and one enemies._

She watches him yell at his men, arms flailing around in accompaniment to the orders he was giving them – he came across as nothing more than a triad leader wannabe, nothing that she couldn’t handle. She’s taken out men like him before, and they were quite literally all bark and no bite.

Well-hidden behind a dirty brick wall, she adjusts her leather black dress and strapped stilettos she had picked out just for this mission. It doesn’t hurt that she gets to dress in style for the job, though in all honesty the glitz and glamour only serves to appease her jaded soul by that little bit. She’d much rather rest up at home, in bed, decked in nothing but the worn-out Barbie hoodie she bought when she was a teen.

 _No shame in loving that hoodie, Momo,_ the voice at home reminds her. _Why be ashamed when you know you look cutest in that hoodie?_

(Cue cute giggles and soft fingertips skipping across the thin pink fabric of that very hoodie.)

She shakes the familiar thought out of her head, pulls out and readies the gun she had strapped to her thigh with a garter belt. She cocks the gun, appreciating the polished matte black surface she had requested.

It helps. Shiny things aren’t always the best. Especially not when she’s in this line of business and five days out of seven she’s tailing someone dangerous in the dark.

She counts down to herself, fingers twitching as she reaches the dreaded ‘…two, one’. Time’s up, and she steps out of the shadows and into the light.

That’s when her in-ear crackles to life with a stern, rehearsed voice. “Agent Hirai,” it’s muffled at best, but she can make out her own name even if she were deaf.

She thinks for a split-second before deciding that between a cocked gun in her hand and an angry superior back at home, she’d rather go with the cocked gun. She ignores the order and marches right on, taking another step out into the light with her back pressed against the dirty bricked wall.

“Agent Hirai, stop where you are. Abort mission.” And as if for added dramatic effect, “this is an order.”

Mister Ugly Leopard Print Jacket is still bellowing at his underlings. His position had shifted since the last time she focused on him; now his back was to her and all she had to do was wait.

For the right moment.

To strike.

She’s close enough she can smell the ‘mission success’ brewing in the air. Now if only the voice buzzing in her ear could shut up—

The in-ear crackles to life again, this time with a different tone, and somewhere in the distance she can smell the ‘you’re screwed’ brewing in the air as well. “Agent Hirai, this is my final warning. You are to drop everything and report to Helipad F right now.”

She knows she’s being watched—by men of her own faction, no less—but she doesn’t lower her gun.

“What, is there a gift from a sponsor I could use in the Cornucopia? Because I could use a machine gun right about now.”

It’s really not the wisest thing to be a snarky, quipping smartass now, not when she could pretty much smell the fumes her superior was made out of.

“Momo, I’m telling you to drop it. Now. The chopper’s coming.”

“I’ll drop it when I’m done.”

“Hirai Momo—”

She’s heard enough. She pulls the little metal earplug out and chucks it to the ground, grinding it to powder with one decisive clack of her stiletto heel.

She’s had enough, too. This is her first solo mission in a while and she isn’t about to let some administrative higher-up ruin it. Not when she’s this close to getting the guy.

She’s not failing _again._

That’s the last thing she remembers thinking before strong arms grabbed her from behind and knocked her out with a quick fist to the skull.

=

She wakes up in a cold metal chair, still in her figure-hugging black dress and strapped stilettos. Her beloved handgun was on the desk, unloaded of bullets for safety purposes.

At least they had the courtesy not to cuff her to the damn chair, she thinks while rubbing the bruise out of the side of her head.

The door slides open to reveal the man who’d gone from last-name basis to first-name basis to full-name basis with her, all in the span of a minute. A truly _lovely_ man, her handler was.

After years of being on the force, she thinks to herself bitterly, this must be how they’ve learned to handle her. He must’ve gotten a raise for figuring out how to handle _this damned teenager_ – not like she was anything more than that in everybody else’s eyes, anyway.

He sits opposite her in a cushier chair, laying out several files before her that she didn’t even bother to sneak glances at.

“How’s your head feeling?”

 _How’d yours if I punched it in?_ “Fine.”

He must be able to hear the connotations in her words—word, and he clears his throat before opening the file nearest to him. “Sorry about the unceremonious interruption. We have urgent matters to settle back at HQ that we needed you back for.”

“I was less than a hundred metres away from him.”

“I know. We sent in a task force to clear the scene up. The same task force you were under strict orders to call in the moment you got into the place.”

He watches her carefully. She evades his eyes, though there was really no point in doing it. Alas, the wise man figures it out— _so she went in with a death wish; what’s he gonna do about it?_

“I could’ve taken him down on my own.”

“Him? Just him? Yeah, sure, no doubt about that. What about the dozen men he had with him out there and the three dozen more he had waiting inside?”

“That’s what the task force was for, isn’t it? I would’ve called them eventually, you know. I could’ve cleared this mission.”

“Then maybe check if you have enough bullets first next time. I don’t think rushing into the wolf’s den with just _one_ will go over very well with Mission Review.”

She glances at her handgun, then looks back to him. Wills herself not to think of how _that_ would’ve ended up; her bullet would probably be lost out on the open ground, far off from her original aim, and their bullets would be lodged in her frame, going by the dozen.

She’s silent when he goes on, flipping through the file he opened just minutes ago. She gets reminded by the dull ache in the side of her head that the file must contain the reason she was called back so unceremoniously.

A lot of the file is concealed by the slight angle at which it was tilted to fit the man’s line of vision. But it starts becoming clearer, as the pages flip on its own inside her head, and she recognises every line as though they were etched onto the back of her hand. She’s held that file a million times, so how could she not have known what was inside?

“You were called back to discuss the situation of a teammate of yours,” he says, laying the file open in front of her, complete with a shiny, untouched agent profile photo affixed to the top left corner of the page. “Agent—”

“—Myoui Mina.”

_Mina._

=

In the meeting room adjacent to theirs are two girls, seated in the same cold metal chairs they hadn’t seen since their recruitment and induction as agents all those years ago.

“Are you sure about this?” One girl, with big, round crystal eyes, asks the other. “Yoo Jeongyeon. You’re absolutely sure?”

The other girl, stoic as can be, nods. “If you’re not, you don’t have to do this with me.” She turns to find those crystal eyes, worried as can be, boring into hers. “But I’m sure, Jihyo. Absolutely sure.”

The worry in those big eyes subsided a little, returning to its usual amount of concern. “If you’re sure, then I’m not going anywhere else.” She pats her friend on the back. “I go where you go.”

The door opens and a lady walks in holding two clipboards. “Girls, have you made up your mind?”

Jihyo is the one who nods. Jeongyeon takes the clipboards over from the lady, who bites back a sigh. “Very well. After filling in these forms, head to the Equipment Facility. There you’ll hand over everything you were ever issued.”

The lady leaves. The two girls look down at the clipboards, finding two forms, one for each of them, both emblazoned with the heading _Agent Resignation_.

=

“As you know,” he slides the file nearer to her, for her to get a closer look at Mina’s face. As if Momo would ever need that. “She’s been missing for a while now—”

“She’s not _missing,_ ” Momo snaps. “She just hasn’t updated her whereabouts in a while—”

“Momo, you’re her point of contact. Her _liaison_. I don’t care what else you want to call it, be it a friend or whatever you deem fit, but you were supposed to maintain contact with her. Once a month at the very least, no matter what. With no exceptions.”

“She told me to wait. I trust her, and I know she’s not in trouble—”

“She told you to wait, huh? Just like what you wanted us to do earlier on? Well take a guess as to where you’d be had we waited. And now take another guess where your beloved friend and teammate could be, now that you actually chose to goddamned wait _._ ”

=

_Red soda can, Mina’s airy laughter._

_On a bench in a secluded park, with the little canal Mina liked._

_They were laughing over something that happened earlier in the day. Then the laughter fizzles out and Momo senses something amiss._

_“You have something you want to talk about?”_

_Mina turns to her, sheepish and gentle smile already telling of something more._

_Momo rolls her eyes and sips on her soda. “And here I thought we were actually going to take a break, talk about something other than work for once.”_

_Cue airy laughter again, but this time it sounds more rueful. Like there was more to it, and this caught Momo’s attention. Mina just lets her laughter fade into one of her trademark enigmatic smiles. “Since when do we ever take a break, Momo?”_

_“Well, here’s someone who sounds overworked. So, what’s wrong? They’re not paying you enough?”_

_“You know I wouldn’t even be here if I’m that concerned about money.”_

_“That’s true. Princess Black Swan does whatever she wants.”_

_“Well… Not this time.”_

_“What could they be making you do now that you haven’t already done?” Momo questions, a brow raised and a mix of sarcasm and curiosity evident in her tone._

_It takes a while for it to sink in, but Momo finally gets it._

_She’s heard an exchange of the same vein go down before, between her uncle and aunt at an annual family reunion. The two were out in the backyard, sharing words that eventually devolved into her aunt’s hot, angry tears. And young Momo was just watching, wide-eyed and silent, by the backdoor._

_She doesn’t see her uncle again for quite a long while, and the next time she does, he’s missing three fingers and blind in one eye. And nobody talks about where he’d gone in the time being. Because nobody knew where he’d gone in the time being, apart from the person he picked to be his liaison._

_(The stress of not knowing if he’d come back alive to her eventually drove Momo’s aunt to ask for a divorce from the man. So all in all he comes back missing three fingers, blind in one eye and with one wife less. Momo thinks they should’ve stuck together, but she knows her aunt would’ve been driven crazy if she had to be left guessing as to the fate of the love of her life._

_Oh, and her aunt was also her uncle’s pick for liaison.)_

_“You’re the new undercover draft?”_

_“Surprise,” Mina makes a futile attempt at sounding cheery. Silence follows, and it hangs heavily in the air between them. It makes everything turn that much colder, as reality finally sinks in for the both of them._

_“Mina…”_

_“I took it.” Mina smiles, playing with her own fingers as she turns from Momo to the canal, which helped to calm her uneasy heart. “They were nice enough to let me opt out of it, saying it was a random draft and they could just pick another person to go for it.” A pause. “But I took it. Figured I shouldn’t dodge my destiny, you know?”_

_That pause was all Momo needed to understand. That all those years ago, had her uncle not gone on that mission, her aunt might have had to. And now, if Mina doesn’t go on that mission, the love of Mina’s life might have to._

_And it may have been a one in a million chance that their lover would’ve been picked in their stead, but there was no room for risk, was there?_

_They say love makes you do crazy things and Momo’s starting to see just how true that line could be._

_Mina puts a hand over Momo’s free one, the one that wasn’t gripping the soda can so tightly her fingers were imprinted onto the aluminium. “Why do you look like you just kicked a puppy?”_

_“This is all my fault, Mina,” she breathes out._

_Then they both have a quick flashback to the moment that started it all, to the moment that start the ball rolling. That particular day when Momo found them lurking by a lonely stairwell in a subway station, a place the three teenaged friends like to frequent. That particular moment when Momo introduced herself as part of the academy she was shipped off to when she turned eighteen. That particular second when the trio agreed to hear Momo out._

_Mina takes Momo’s free hand and wraps her own around it. “You and I have very different ways of looking at it. You didn’t do anything_ wrong _, Momo. Far from that, you hear me?”_

_Momo’s too shaken to process Mina’s words but is forced to listen when Mina puts both hands on Momo’s cheeks and wills her to listen. “You gave us a new purpose in life, you know. I mean, yeah, we could’ve chosen not to believe you, and just carry on with our own merry lives, but what fun would that be?” Mina smiles that trademark smile of hers. “Trust me, kicking ass and saving the world as a team? That’s what counts. These past few years have been life-changing and I know the other two would agree. I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.”_

_There’s a pull in Mina’s voice that has Momo believing her, just in that instant, and believing that she could actually be right about all of these. That maybe Momo was thinking too much, doubting too much, worrying too much—_

_Then Momo remembers her aunt’s hot, angry tears in her backyard and it hits her again. That_ no, _she’s not supposed to be egging Mina on. Someone has to talk Mina out of it or she might risk losing a friend._

 _“Mina, you can’t go. Not when the three of us might lose a friend. Not when you might end up leaving_ her _behind—”_

_“That’s why… They told me to pick the right liaison. No pressure on you, but I was told to pick the person I trusted the most, whose hands I could put my life in.”_

_“So who did you pick—”_

_It hits her like a gust of wind in all the wrong places, or like a sucker punch to the gut._

_Mina’s made up her mind. And all Momo can do is stare, slack-jawed, as it finally sinks in – the gravity of the favour Mina was asking of her._

_“I trust you, Momo. With my life. It’s in your blood; you’re a Hirai. I know my life is in good hands.”_

_Momo wants to chide Mina for bringing up her bloodline again. Aside from the words that make up her last name, there was really nothing she could deem shared between her and the rest of her family, who were all veterans in the industry. Heck, one of her ancestors was the damned founder of the whole nine yards._

_But Momo keeps her mouth shut, knows that Mina’s mind is made up, and that from here on out, it’s all or nothing._

_Hopefully not the latter._

_“So, can I entrust you with my life?” Mina asks, for the very last time._

_Momo nods._

_As Mina gets up to leave, Momo takes it all in then and there._

_Later, back in HQ, Momo gets briefed by their team handler on what to expect in her duty as liaison. She cuts him off halfway through a sentence she wasn’t even listening to in the first place._

_“Am I really fit for the job? I don’t have any experience in this, so what if I mess up? What if_ she _messes up—how do I even begin to save her? I—I can’t watch my friend die. Can I go in her stead? And—and why not Jihyo? She’s the most level-headed agent I know, she’d know what to do.”_

_The man just watches as Momo’s questions fade out to silence. Then he leans forward, as close as possible, and looks straight into the scared girl’s eyes._

_“Because this is all about trust, and it’s got to be someone Mina trusts more than anybody else.”_

It’s also about love, she thinks. Because the person Mina trusts more than anybody else is the love of her life, Jeongyeon, she thinks. Because Mina’s smarter than to subject Jeongyeon to this sort of emotional torture, she thinks.

_“And that’s you.”_

_Momo knows it’s not her, but she takes it anyway. If anything, it’s to save_ both _Mina and Jeongyeon._

=

“As you know, protocol has it that after a set period of time, at the liaison and mission supervisor’s discretion, all undercover agents that have failed to update their whereabouts will be declared _missing_.”

 _Missing_. In the dictionary that their line of work used, it was often a placeholder for the word _dead_. And Momo’s about to explain why.

“You won’t do that to Mina. You can’t.”

“I’m—we’re trying to save her, Momo. Can’t you see that? We need to officially declare her missing so that we can deploy agents to go find her.”

“You left out the words ‘dead or alive’.”

By officially declaring her missing, her identity will be exposed for the world to see. Or, at least, the relevant parts of the world that both want to keep her alive or have her dead, depending on which identity of hers they’d been privy to before she disappeared off the radar.

That means, anybody who’d known her as _Sharon_ – specifically, the crime syndicate family she was sent to infiltrate – would have her throat slit then and there. Or worse, and Momo would rather not think of the possibilities.

“Of course, we want her alive, Momo. Think about the bigger picture here. If we don’t take action, we’ll never know where she is.”

“She told me to _wait!_ I trust _her_ , just as she trusts me. You were the one who told me that this was all about the big T, so can we—just—hold back, and not take any action for now?”

The man leans back into his seat, exhausted from the verbal banter against the girl who held up a little too well. _A Hirai indeed, huh._ “So what are you saying, Momo?”

“I’m saying wait. Just… Just give me a while. Give her a while. I’ll come back here in person to tell you to pull the trigger when I’ve finally decided to give up.”

“So you’re choosing to wait at the expense of your friend’s life?”

“I’m choosing to wait so that it _wouldn’t_ be at the expense of her life.”

He stares straight ahead and backs down only after what seemed like an eternity.

“It’s on you,” he says with finality as he closes the file. “Her life is in your hands.”

_Just as she wanted it to be._

Momo nods.

As the door shuts behind him, she stands up. Her legs feel like giving way, but she knows this is just where it begins.

She needs a plan. And she needs one fast.

=

Jeongyeon puts the finishing touches on her resignation form before turning to find Jihyo, all done and quietly waiting for her.

“You sure you won’t regret this?”

Jihyo scoffs, but even her voice betrays her. Jeongyeon just looks at her with the most unbelieving eyes, and Jihyo swallows to make a point. “Look, I dived in headfirst back then with you and…” She makes a mental note not to say the name. “And I came into this thinking that if I had the both of you, all will be well. _She_ left six months ago for a sabbatical, and now you think it’s high time for you to call it quits too. I have nothing to stay for. So, it’s time for me to go too.”

“You realise we’ll have to start afresh, lead new lives, probably go apply to college or something, right?”

It’s just like Jeongyeon to crack a dumb joke at a moment like this, but you can’t deny that her wry humour does wonders to save the day sometimes. “Yeah, we could just head to community college together, huh.”

They laugh about it for a while before it turns solemn and Jeongyeon’s back to her stoic self. Jihyo recognises the look.

“You’re thinking about her again?”

“It’s just… She might come back and find us both gone from the team. It’d be quite the rude awakening from her break, wouldn’t it? To find out we left her in the lurch while she declared that she’d disappear to god-knows-where.”

“You know you’re not referring to us and the team, Jeongyeon. You’re more afraid of her coming back and finding out that _you’d_ went ahead and left it all behind.”

Jeongyeon glances at Jihyo’s knowing expression and sighs. She’d give it to Jihyo for knowing her so well. “Yeah, maybe I am.”

“Frankly, if you ask me, I say she’d have no qualms about you quitting the job. I mean, she’s the one who’s taking unpaid leave for an extended vacation. She must’ve hated it as much as you did.”

“But I’m the one who’s been talking about leaving the force. She sees this job as her calling in life, like she was destined to do this or something, you know.” A pause. “Plus, what if it’s not the job she’s tired of? What if it’s… Me?”

It’s the smallest she’s heard Jeongyeon sound in a while. And all she wants to do is undo the damage that Mina did to her, so that Jeongyeon would – for once – stop blaming herself for the latter’s choice to leave.

“She could never be, Jeong. She’d spend the rest of her life with you if she could. Nobody makes her smile the way you do.”

_Then why did she leave?_

Before it gets to the question Jihyo can’t answer, she drags Jeongyeon up from the chair they were both slumped in. “Now let’s go. We have new lives to lead.”

They head out of the room, and out the corner of their eye they notice a familiar face step out of the room next to theirs. All of them stop in their tracks.

And then Jeongyeon is the first to go, practically storming off with the way her feet hit the tiles. Jihyo stares after Jeongyeon, then turns to give Momo a helpless gaze.

“I’m so sorry, Momo.”

Momo just manages the politest smile she can muster, and then her eyes dart down to the resignation papers clenched tightly in Jihyo’s hands.

Jihyo shuffles the papers out of sight, so that they were tucked neatly behind her back, but she knows Momo’s seen enough to understand. Momo just gives another small, if a little sad, smile.

“That bad, huh?”

“She’s taking it a little hard. Thinks Mina left because she was tired of _her_ , and not of, you know, the job.”

Momo stares after Jeongyeon’s disappearing shadow and simply nods, though it was killing her on the inside that the poor girl had gotten it all wrong. “It’s fine. I know this job isn’t the easiest.” She turns back to good old Jihyo, with the big, round crystal eyes that always seemed to glimmer with a shred of concern. “Let her blame it on me. I did bring you guys into this whole mess, after all.”

“It’s not your fault, Momo.”

“Someone has to take one for the team.” She tries to give a bright smile as a send-off for the girl who was always too sweet and too nice and too good for this industry. “All the best, Jihyo. Help me send my regards to Jeongyeon, too.”

Jihyo nods and goes scurrying after the now-gone Jeongyeon.

Momo watches as the girl disappears round the bend, and as her team dwindles down to a grand total of one.

(Now how was she going to get started on that plan she needed?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait! i'll try to be more on the ball next time. your patience will be much appreciated because we have some ways to go before all the girls will be introduced formally!
> 
> hit subscribe if you'd like to so that you can get updates straight in your inbox.
> 
> as always, comments and kudos and constructive criticism are appreciated! <3 yell at me (about the fic, or not, doesn't matter, anything's cool by me) on twt @ediblemomo or on my cc @junnir.


	3. iii.

_The end of it all._

The last note is played. Cue slow claps that evolve into thundering applause. Standing ovations, celebratory shouts of her name. The curtains fall, close in on her.

She doesn’t get up from her bow until a solid minute has passed with her in the darkness behind the now-closed stage curtains.

She likes this singular moment of peace. She is well aware of the fanfare beyond the curtains, but all she hears is _silence_. It is a calming kind of silence, the kind that soothes her uneasy heart.

It’s different from the contented kind of peace and harmony that the melody from her violin provides her with. In that singular moment of silence, she can actually breathe and hear herself doing it. She feels _alive_.

She feels arms guide her off-stage, into the wings and then backstage, where her beloved violin – her prized possession, _her one and only_ – is ripped away from her being to be kept safe in its casing.

Without it in her hands, she feels like a weight has been lifted. But it also feels like a part of her was taken away.

_Like all the other parts of her that have been taken away._

There’s a kind of heavy emptiness that slowly sinks in as the arms that guided her off-stage now guide her towards the exit. Grand double doors are opened before her, and she feels a thick, expensive coat being draped over her frame. She hears the shutter clicks and chatter of nosy reporters even before she reaches the exterior of the recital hall.

The arms that were holding her by her shoulders left her proximity; she feels lost for a quick second, until those arms reappear before her as her bodyguard shoving and chasing away those twats from the tabloid.

“We’re just doing our jobs!” they chorus. The bodyguard snarls, “so am I.”

She looks down, keeps her head hung low, and focuses on the shifting of her feet. Left, right, left, right, like a steady heartbeat or a pulse. It keeps her steady, even when all she feels is unsteady and all she wants to do is drop to the floor and curl up into a ball.

The coat doesn’t keep her warm at all in this harsh, cold night.

She is ushered up a car, one of those rare vintage classics that money couldn’t buy you even a spare part of. It’s a prized possession, but not hers; she knows one man who’d consider it his.

She slides into the backseat, pulls the coat a little tighter around herself. It doesn’t fit her all that well – it only occurs to her now that it probably isn’t even from her closet. She watches as the bodyguard from earlier climb in after her, followed by a lady dressed in nothing but a professional pantsuit. The coat has to be hers.

“Miss Chou, you’re safe now. We’ll take you home,” the lady says.

She watches the lady’s lips move, uttering those words, and it suddenly occurs to her that she has no idea who she is.

And yet it feels like she’s been around for a while now.

“I’m sorry, you’re…?”

The lady blinks at her, a little bewildered. She glances at the bodyguard, who merely stares straight ahead. Then she clears her throat and gives the friendliest smile she can manage, doing her utmost not to spook the girl.

“I’m your new assistant, Miss Chou. I’ve been with you for about two weeks.”

She continues watching the lady’s lips move, but her mind has long told her to stop listening. When the lady finishes speaking, she sinks into the seat, sinks into it as far as she could.

The car speeds off into the night, camera flashes of those journalists left far behind her.

She’s seated safely in the backseat of a car she practically grew up in, and she still doesn’t feel steady.

Next to her, the day’s papers are emblazoned with headlines that scream her name with all the admiration in the world. _Chou Tzuyu, prodigal violinist, performs one-night-only show in city she calls home!_

She throws the coat atop of the papers and looks out the window.

_She feels a hand slide over hers, squeezing it tight. “A penny for your thoughts?”_

_Tzuyu doesn’t answer, just lets a shy smile ghost over her lips. She continues looking out the window, refusing to make eye contact with the owner of that haunting voice._

_She squeezes the hand back. (“I’m thinking of you, silly.”)_

But there are no stars in the sky tonight, not like the way it was all those years ago, and that’s how she knows none of it is real.

She turns away from the window and looks around the car. Still just the lady she can’t remember, and the bodyguard who is not and could never be the one she had all those years ago.

(“I’m still thinking of you, silly.”)

=

Momo hops off a Harley, her preferred choice of transport modes. It’s a ride bought years ago, when she finally became of age, mostly to spite her protective father; she was never a huge fan of bikes to begin with.

Admittedly, though, it grew on her after a while. There’s this liberating sensation of light-headedness she feels whenever the winds blow over while she’s speeding ninety down a highway. It feels like all her demons are leaving with the currents. It makes her heart race, in a good way.

It makes her feel like she could do just about anything, like she’s on top of the world. Even if the truth couldn’t be further away. She gets to forget all about it for a while.

She peels off a layer of biker jacket, revealing the tracksuit she had changed into after the leather black dress finally drove her up the wall with how suffocating it had been. It’s nice to dress comfortably once in a while. She’s gone through countless outfits over her numerous years of being in the industry, but none ever feel right to her.

_It’s always the pink hoodie she comes back to at the end of the day._

She makes the familiar ascent up the building, to her apartment, the place she calls home only occasionally. Sometimes missions require her to sleep elsewhere. Sometimes she doesn’t even get to sleep. And sometimes she has to sleep alone in that apartment. It’s never called home when any of those happen.

It’s only called home when _home_ is right there by her side, fingers laced through the gaps between hers, warm breath waltzing over her weathered skin.

She stretches minimally while making the nine-floor climb, flicking limbs and massaging joints while her legs bring her back hom—to that apartment.

She’s already disappointed by the time she gets to her floor and her door is in sight. What are the chances that today isn’t going to be like one of those mindlessly mundane ones, when she just sits and withers with all her inner demons, all alone in the dark?

Dragging her feet to the mahogany door, she fishes in her bag for her keys. It’s only when she’s two feet away does she finally realise that her door is ajar.

_Ajar. Someone’s in there._

She swallows, ditches the keys, opts to tiptoe her way in. Adrenaline rising, pulse hastening, fear gripping her by the throat, she thinks: whoever it is, this break-in perpetrator will have a very bad day.

She hears rummaging in the kitchen – a weird place to start for a thief – and finds the rest of her apartment in perfect condition. Edging in one foot after another, she grabs a rare collector’s baseball bat from the wall and poises to attack.

Then she hears the perpetrator mumbling.

To herself _._

In Japanese.

When the _perpetrator_ sees Momo, she makes a loud squeak and drops the bowl of mushrooms she had pressed up against her chest. Momo drops her arms, guarded walls coming down, the bat landing gently against the side of her leg.

“I’m so sorry, I should’ve told you…” The not-perpetrator says to Momo, remorse apparent in her gentle voice. Momo exhales in relief, all the pent-up and panicked air in her system finally finding release.

“No, it’s fine. I should’ve remembered that you were coming over.” She leans the bat against the nearest wall and steps over to the girl.

(Today, she gets to call this apartment _home_.)

“Hey, don’t apologise, okay?” Momo smiles. She means it.

The pouting girl frowns guiltily, bending over to retrieve the bowl of mushrooms and continue picking up the pieces she must have accidentally knocked over earlier. “I must’ve scared you. I didn’t mean to.”

Momo laughs, bending over to help her. “It’s fine, Sana. Really.”

“Not when you’re having those nightmares,” Sana mumbles in response.

Momo halts mid-movement and turns her head just the slightest of angles so that Sana’s face is in sight. She watches the furrowed brows on the pretty little face, worry evident in every wrinkle, and reaches over with a clean, non-mushroomed hand to poke her in the cheek with a gentle fingertip.

Sana glances in Momo’s direction but looks back at the mushrooms, busying herself instead of letting the worry seep all the way through. She bites back a sigh, resorting instead to a small muted exhale. “All I wanted was to make dinner for you. I’m sorry I scared you.”

There’s a dull ache that hits Momo in pangs. And it happens whenever Sana feels bad. And as much as Sana brought the light she embodied into Momo’s life, watching Sana feel anything but happy brought a kind of darkness that was just as potent too.

And then there’s this one particular dull ache that never, ever goes away. The kind that brings with it a darkness that’s always a dormant threat, a threat that could engulf Momo forever. It’s a by-product of her making a conscious choice not to tell Sana the truth about what she does – the whole bloodline of agents, the perpetual danger, the things she’s seen and the things she’s even _done_ – the whole nine yards, Sana’s not aware of it.

And Sana never questions, never ever does even if it kills her not to know (because she’s the kind who can go insane just from worrying). She never questions because that’s just it, the only answer she needs is Momo.

She trusts Momo. She trusts her with every fibre of her being.

(So even if Momo comes home marked with bruises that sting enough to draw tears and cuts that don’t ever seem to heal, she just runs her fingers over them and prays quietly that she could heal them all. She kisses those marks like it’s just another part of Momo, except parts of her that she wishes she could kiss away.)

As for Momo? She doesn’t trust even half as easily, not even close. But she trusts Sana. So she’s made a promise to herself that she’ll tell Sana someday. The truth, all of it and nothing less.

Someday, the day when she finally gets to leave it all behind. The day when she vows to start afresh, to lead a new life. A life that would only see her in her happy-ever-after with Sana.

(There’s something a little more than trust when it comes to Sana, but Momo hasn’t quite figured it out yet.

Or maybe she has, but it’s just not time for her to accept it yet.

Not when she’s still unable to bring herself to tell Sana the whole truth.)

The water’s still running when Momo comes from behind, reaches forth and wraps her fingers around Sana’s hands, distracting her from her current task-at-hand of washing the ingredients needed for dinner.

Sana makes a sound she only makes when she’s caught off-guard. Momo has a knack for doing that to her pretty often.

“Hey—” Sana’s shut up by Momo resting her chin ever so gently in the curve of Sana’s neck.

“Listen, Sana. You don’t have to apologise for anything.” There’s a smile on Momo’s lips when she whispers these words and Sana can feel the curve of those lips move against the skin on her neck. It’s making her stomach drop and she thinks Momo can feel it too. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m always glad you’re here.”

Sana turns off the tap and turns around to properly face Momo. There’s that trademark smile of hers that Momo adores, especially now more than ever when her nightmares are getting more frequent and her inner demons are running rampant.

Sana does nothing but smile at her, almost expectantly. Momo recognises the look. It came up once when she first complimented Sana for something so small and trivial she no longer remembers what it was exactly. But Sana lit up so brightly she wanted to keep that shine on her forever.

It fills Momo with enough light and hope that she just dives right in without a second thought. She never needs a second thought to – quite literally, and with her own lips, no less – take Sana’s breath away anyway.

Sana has a habit of wrapping her arms around Momo’s neck to draw her in when they’re already less than inches apart. Momo never complains, because whenever they break apart for air the first thing she sees upon opening her eyes are Sana’s dark, magical, hazel ones.

She’s never quite understood clichés, but she thinks she could understand how one could get lost in another’s eyes.

Figures, since she’d been getting lost in those eyes for as long as she could remember.

=

_They were 13 when they met._

_A young Momo was dragged along to Korea along with the rest of her family when the local chapter of the agency was destroyed in a brutal fight that took away some of her distant, extended family. She had her entire life in her hometown packed up in a matter of seconds and soon she felt her mother’s hand tug her along into the family car, then an ominous-looking SUV and finally a nondescript private jet. She felt almost just like yet another piece of baggage in her family’s belongings._

_Enter Minatozaki Sana._

_On the first day of middle school, surrounded by people who were quite literally foreign to her, all spouting a language Momo barely knew the basics of, a girl came skipping up to her out of nowhere, bringing an important promise – in a language she finally recognised as the one that’s been narrating her entire life – that Momo needn’t worry as long as she was around._

_And that was how Sana entered her life._

(And somehow, even ten years down the road, that first promise Sana made still rings true.)

_School was mostly a bore and Momo swore she would’ve dropped out had it not been for Sana’s perpetual presence, annoying and pestering her to stay by her side instead of opting to ditch her. Sana always used that first encounter of theirs to make Momo do her bidding – though in all honesty, Momo would’ve followed suit even without the reminder. After all, it was Sana they were talking about._

_And then three years passed._

_They were 16 when it happened._

_It was the annual sleepover that the two of them planned, with only the two of them invited. And it always fell on Sana’s birthday, because she mentioned once – while very carefully evading Momo’s curious probe into where her parents were, because the adults were always off ‘doing their own thing’ and Sana couldn’t care less anymore – that this was how she would’ve liked to celebrate her birthday._

_She wasn’t a fan of the usual birthday traditions – the cake was mostly Momo’s thing and she hated the idea of people singing a birthday song they didn’t even mean. So she roped Momo into making the birthday sleepover an annual thing._

_On her 16 th birthday, Sana and Momo had a whole playlist of movies lined up all through the night. By the end of the second flick, Momo was fast asleep, her head resting on Sana’s shoulder._

_Sana just smiled at her sleeping best friend. She switched the television off and made to shift her body a bit so that Momo’s head wasn’t resting uncomfortably on her shoulder blade._

_Then Momo tugged her closer, hugged her arm and rested her head just an inch away from Sana’s beating heart._

_That’s when Sana realised their fingers were laced together, woven together in a web that had been spun since long ago._

_She became well-aware of that beating heart of hers, and of everything else in between._

_That’s when Sana_ realised.

=

It’s in the dead of night when Momo sits up in bed, careful not to stir awake the fast-asleep Sana. She climbs out gingerly and edges over to the desk on which she kept nothing significant but a frame that held a photo of her and Sana. She turns it around and feels for the little protrusion where she’d hidden a letter meant for her, should she disappear off the face of the earth one day.

It’s still there, and she sighs both in relief and in despair.

Mina’s disappearance is still heavy on her mind. She knows she has a mission to carry out. Even if it winds up being her last.

They had been a good team, she, Mina, Jeongyeon and Jihyo. They may have been young, but they had worked so well together, once upon a time.

It had never once been Momo’s intention to have the four of them torn apart in the way they had been. She knew, deep down, that the three girls she recruited would one day have lives of their own, happy lives that didn’t see them running into the face of danger every two to three days. Mina and Jeongyeon, especially – she’s always seen something special in the bond they shared, and she knew their relationship would go a long way.

That is, until the random undercover draft had occurred, and Mina had been chosen along with it.

Mina had always been an exemplary agent. She had always been the proudest of the four of them to be doing this, wearing the role of an agent like a literal badge of honour. And she knew that her days as an agent would have to come to an end.

Momo had always known that Mina was considering leaving the role behind. Because that was what Jeongyeon had wanted, and Mina always knew she’d pick Jeongyeon over anything else. So as much as she adored the role, she knew she would wind up leaving it behind for a life ahead of her that she could share with the girl she loved most.

The undercover mission was supposed to be her last, in a good way.

Momo knows what it feels like to want to come back to someone at the end of the day. After all, she has her own someone too, lying sound asleep just metres away from her.

So she’ll try to get Mina back.

She puts down the frame that held the photo of her and Sana, thumbing across Sana’s face in the process.

Or she’ll die trying.

=

_The morning after the movie marathon, Momo heads downstairs to scavenge for breakfast snacks in Sana’s kitchen. She’d been here enough times to know where everything was, mostly because she always brought too much food over and Sana always let her go to town with the kitchen’s storage compartments._

_She pulled out a carton of pink grapefruit juice from the fridge, a staple item Sana knew to get stocked for whenever Momo was coming over. As she pulled the opening of the juice carton closer to her mouth she realised she saw a bit of her in everything around the kitchen._

_That was odd, because she was starting to notice something similar in just about every corner in Sana’s lonely house._

_It was never much of a concern if she were to be honest. After all, she and Sana were inseparable – it almost made too much sense for her to drop over as frequently as five days a week._

_But something about Sana making almost every corner of her house reminiscent of her made her feel different._

_A_ good _kind of different._

_She was still taking in mouthfuls of juice when Sana came bounding down the stairs, with a glazed look on her face that was almost unreadable._

_Then Sana came closer to her. Closer, and closer, until she was close enough to knock the juice carton right out of her hands._

_And that was exactly what she did when she grabbed Momo’s hands to pull her in._

_She could taste the sweet tanginess of pink grapefruit on Momo’s lips. And as for Momo, she could taste the sudden realisation of why there was a bit of her in every corner of Sana’s house._

_As the pink juice pooled by their feet, juice carton left forgotten on the floor, their hands somehow found one another, and their fingers fit right in the gaps between – much like last night, last week, last month, last year… and all the other days in between._

_And everything felt right._

_When they broke apart it was only for air. Breathless, Sana leaned her forehead on Momo’s, too afraid to have her eyes open. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, lips flushed and voice a choked kind of timid._

_Momo’s shaky hands somehow find Sana’s cheeks amidst this mess they made, and she tapped gently on Sana’s eyelids to have her show those dark hazels to her. “Don’t be,” she said. And then her lips were halfway there to meet Sana’s very own again._

_This is love, always has been._

_They just haven't figured it out._

=

In a lonely gas station halfway across town, a Harley rolls up and parks itself right next to a vacant gas pump.

The girl behind the cashier counter barely looks up from the magazine she flips through without paying any attention to.

Then the bells on the door jingle to sound a customer’s entrance.

She still doesn’t look up from the stupid tabloid magazine in her hands.

“Son Chaeyoung?”

She _still_ doesn’t look up. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”

“That’s your name, huh?”

The voice takes on a particularly challenging tone. Chaeyoung finally decides to look up, ditching the magazine that had been killing her brain cells one page at a time.

She sees a long-haired girl, clad in a biker jacket, hair tied up in a messy ponytail. She doesn’t even flinch. “I said what I said.”

The girl leans forward to rest her arms on the counter. “It’s 3AM and you look bored. What do you say we go for a ride?”

Chaeyoung scans her up and down, then looks back at the tabloid magazine. “Not interested.”

“I think you would be if I showed you something.”

The girl in the biker jacket slides a piece of paper over to Chaeyoung. On it is written only one singular word: _Firecracker._

Chaeyoung’s fists clench under the counter. “What do you want?”

Momo smiles. “To go for a ride.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> characters left unintroduced: 2! miss kim and miss im will appear in the next chapter.
> 
> i'll try to stick to this 14/15-day update schedule!


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